Cleveland Editorial

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

After nearly four years, Social Security disability applicants can be forgiven for being cynical about the latest pledges to end the backlog that keeps their cases in limbo.

This time, however, there is a ray of hope that the reforms will work. The Social Security Administration has a bigger budget from Congress and a newly rediscovered sense of urgency about the plight of the 14,090 applicants in Northeast Ohio who have been waiting for months, in some cases years, for a resolution.

The delays are inexcusable. They heap bureaucratic agony on once-proud working people laid low by crippling diseases or accidents. Some people lost their homes, their medical insurance or their very lives before a judge awarded them a disability payment.

The latest reforms could unclog this blocked spigot. And other remedies are in the works that focus on technology and personnel. More judges will be added to the Social Security bench, and current judges are giving priority to the oldest cases and using videos at hearings or not holding hearings at all - simply relying on the documents before them.

Judges should make sure to use the no-hearings solution carefully, so fraud doesn't flourish in the system. But with thousands awaiting a decision - and a possible tidal wave of dis-abled baby boomers not far down the road - the Social Security Administration has to stop making promises and start delivering on them.